ATP Tennis Betting: Grass specialist Sugita can get the better of Copil in Rosmalen

Rain has meant that we still have round one matches to play in Stuttgart and round two begins in Rosmalen on Wednesday and Sean Calvert has two wagers to consider on day three of the grass court swing.

ATP Tennis Betting: Grass specialist Sugita can get the better of Copil in Rosmalen

Rain has meant that we still have round one matches to play in Stuttgart and round two begins in Rosmalen on Wednesday and Sean Calvert has two wagers to consider on day three of the grass court swing.

Debrief

There wasn’t much play in Stuttgart on Tuesday, but we still managed to lose our outright in the Mercedes Cup when Philipp Kohlschreiber lost in two tie breaks to Denis Istomin.

It was always a potentially tricky round one against Istomin, who can be very effective on grass, and the Uzbek had one of his good days on the green stuff to oust our man in straight sets.

The weather forecast looks much better for Wednesday in Stuttgart, with 0% chance of rain from 11:00 local time, so if they’re right we should catch up a bit with the delayed matches at the Mercedes Cup.

It’s expected to be pretty much the same as that in Rosmalen too, with a cloudy day in prospect and 0% chance of rain from 11:00 there too and my interest at the Libema Open begins with their opening match on Court 1.

Marius Copil vs Yuichi Sugita

I’m happy to side with the better grass courter in this one and that’s Sugita, whose record on the green stuff is a fair bit superior to Copil’s and he can confirm the form of their Surbiton clash last season.

Sugita was a slight underdog that day at Challenger level and he ended up a 7-5, 6-4 winner, and so we can assume the match-up isn’t too much of a problem for him.

The Japanese must have been counting down the days for the clay swing to end, having gone 0-6 on it his service hold/break total was just 82.1 in those six matches.

Now back on his beloved grass, where he won that Surbiton event and the Antalya tournament at main level last season Sugita wasted no time in beating Nikoloz Basilashvili in round one here in Rosmalen in straight sets.

Sugita’s hold/break total for his last 10 matches on grass is an impressive 110.4 and that’s considerably better than the 96.1 of Copil, which is based on the nine career main level matches that the Romanian has played.

The assumption seems to be that as Copil has a big serve he must be decent on grass, but he hasn’t demonstrated much in the way of aptitude for the surface to me yet, with just three top-100 wins in his career on it – one a couple of days ago versus Aljaz Bedene.

Bedene isn’t up to much on the grass, and Copil found a way to win, despite being a drifter in the market beforehand. Sugita has tightened to 1.80 now, but I think he’s still reasonable value.

Our man Daniil Medvedev is scheduled on Centre Court at around 15:00 UK time and he has every chance of progressing against Fernando Verdasco, who hasn’t won back-to-back matches on grass away from Wimbledon since 2014.

Verdasco tends to perk up a bit for Wimbledon, but elsewhere he hasn’t made a semi final on grass since Nottingham 2008, and Medvedev’s grass numbers lately are considerably better than Nando’s.

You never know with Verdasco, but I’m hopeful of a Medvedev win in this one.

The match before that one is a bit of a pick ‘em, with home hope Robin Haase taking on the ever unreliable Bernard Tomic and this one could take a while, with two players going head-to-head that like to stroke the ball around.

It’s Tomic that has the better hold/break stats over each player’s last 10 main level matches on grass and Haase may be getting the nod for favouritism based on ‘home advantage’.

Haase is 7-10 in Rosmalen though and in those 16 matches he’s broken serve only 11.7% of the time and played a lot of tie break matches, although he has faced Ivo Karlovic twice and Gilles Muller.

Gilles Muller vs Matthew Ebden

Talking of Muller, he plays his first match of the tournament on Wednesday on Court 1 at around 14:00 UK time against Ebden and over 10.5 games in set one at 2.30 looks a wager here.

Muller’s not been able to produce anything like his best tennis since ending his 2017 season early due to elbow tendonitis and that shows in his record this season of 6-12 and it explains why he’s as big as 1.62 to beat Ebden.

There’s also the fact that Ebden has played seven matches on grass already this swing to take into account, but last season this match-up on grass would have seen Muller priced a fair bit shorter.

Muller loves a tie break in his opening set of his yearly grass season, having played one in 2017 (against Seppi), 2016 (Haase), 2014 (Soeda), and 2011 (Andreas Beck).

He didn’t play on grass in 2013, so the only two times he didn’t go to a breaker were in 2015 when he bagelled Marsel Ilhan (only the second bagel he ever dished out on grass) and 2012 when he faced 809th ranked Liam Broady.

Ebden has ben playing pretty well so far this grass swing, but he does struggle against big servers, with a 4-16 record versus the ones on my list (0-8 on grass), but he has won two of his last three (against Isner, Querrey and Karlovic).

His last four against my big servers on grass have all featured tie breaks and six of his last eight on all surfaces have too, so it does seem likely that breaks will be at a premium here.

Muller’s 17 matches in Rosmalen have seen him hold serve 93.2% of the time and break only 12.1% of the time and his tie breaks per set mark is 0.33 at this event.

Ebden has some very good numbers in his last 10 matches at main level on grass, holding 84.9% of the time and breaking 23.1% of the time, but much of that comes from a run to the Newport final last season in a weak field.

Mercedes Cup

We only have three new matches to consider in Stuttgart on Wednesday and one features a certain Roger Federer, who takes on Mischa Zverev for the sixth time in his career at (not before) 14:00 UK time on Centre Court.

Fed famously double bagelled Zverev on grass in Halle back in 2013 and he’s won all 12 sets they’ve contested, but the two matches they played on grass last season against each other were quite tight as straight sets wins go.

Both involved opening set tie breaks and Federer’s record in Stuttgart isn’t the best, with losses in his last two matches to Tommy Haas and Dominic Thiem and a three set struggle versus Taylor Fritz and two breakers against Flo Mayer.

Zverev has already played one match here on the grass, beating Mikhail Youzhny and remaining unbroken, so if ever Federer is worth opposing it’s probably here after he hasn’t played competitively for months.

Set one tie break, tie break in match, or set one to Zverev are all reasonable options in this one.

A match featuring the soon-to-be-retired Florian Mayer and the inconsistent Denis Istomin looks one to avoid, but it’ll be interesting to see how defending champion Lucas Pouille gets on against Rudolf Molleker.

Pouille lost his way badly after a great performance in Davis Cup back in April and lately he’s looked devoid of confidence, so maybe a big upset is possible here.

Molleker won the Heilbronn Challenger on clay last month, beating Jiri Vesely in the final, and he’s already taken down Jan-Lennard Struff here in Stuttgart in round one, so Pouille will need to be careful here.

The 17-year-old was very good on serve against Struff, hitting 26 aces, so with all the pressure on a struggling Pouille the 3.55 on Molleker taking set one looks reasonable.